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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

An upcoming struggle is
emerging in civil society.It will be
between those who have money but lack the political and financial power to
defend it, and those who have the political clout to take it.The Savers and the Takers.

This will happen
because the capitalist system has been turned into a financialist system. The
economy is no longer served by the ﻿﻿banks and financial institutions.We are now at a point where the banks force
the economy to serve them. Those who
benefit are the financial class, their servants in the political class and the
large international organizations such as the EU, the IMF and the World Bank.Those who suffer are the rest of us who are trapped
in the system and cannot find the means to escape it – but they do have small
amounts of saved money or equity.

Who are the savers? In
short, it is those people who look to their own future and have taken decisions
to set aside “value” from today and hold it for use tomorrow.This includes those with savings deposits,
private pension funds (401K, RRSP, ISA etc) and those who have equity in their homes.
It also includes those who hold small physical amounts of precious commodities
such as silver, gold and palladium.

The takers are those governments
with unreasonably high debt levels and unfunded future liabilities.
In cooperation with them are the major international banks that have over
leveraged themselves as well as supra-international institutions such as the EU.

This meme – savers and
takers – will shape much of the political and economic discourse over the next
few years.The existing examples of
where this has occurred have been Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal.How this all plays out is not clear, but
there are lessons to be learned about the limits of the individual and social unrest.

It may be that the
takers themselves are those who will be responsible for a reset of the system
which will produce chaos and then a new system (Capitalism 2.0 or something
different?)

The small time savers
have their money stored in banks. As they are now beginning to realize, this
may not be a safe plan. Having seen what happened in Cyprus and Spain and what
is being planned in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia, they are getting
worried.As such, depositors are
starting to remove their money from banks or are trying to figure out where
else to store their wealth.

This willingness to do
whatever it takes on the part of the takers has a basic flaw.The major banks are frequently leveraged out at 25: 1. This means they only
have to lose some 4% of its deposits before they have liquidity problems. For
more cautious banks that are leveraged out 15:1, this means they would only
have to lose some 6% of their deposits before entering into crisis mode.For those high risk institutions which can be
leveraged out at 60:1, a two percent loss would start a bank run.

It can be seen that the savers - trying to guard what little they have - may start the run by taking out their savings. If only 4% or more of them do this, we are in trouble.

There is a lesson in
all of this.

It is tough to run a
capitalist system with no real capital.Real capital cannot be created by central banks simply “printing”
money.Real loans and real money have to
be backed by real wealth or collateral.It is clear that the ability to produce real collateral for
loans is disintegrating as the standards are falling.

2. Inflation is the
silent thief and it is used by debtors to reduce the cost of repayment.

3. The Cyprus model – simply
take the money directly.

4. The Spanish model –
place an indirect tax on deposits using the banks as intermediaries.

5. The Australian
Model – tax the private pension funds of those with more than $100,000.

6. The Canadian Model –
force depositors into a bail-in.

7. The UK and USA
model – use guaranteed deposit insurance money to bail out banks.

8. The bank model –
use fees and huge spreads on interest rates (as much as 27%) along with fees on
fear and the misspelling of products.

The Outlook

There is only one rule
in economics that actually works:That which cannot go on forever – won’t.

As such, the short
term emergency policies of money printing and low interest rates will stop
because they must.When they do stop,
the sins of more than 30 years of overspending and debt will have to be paid.

It is unlikely that either more austerity (belt
tightening) or more stimuli can fix the current economic difficulties.We are so far in debt in both sovereign and
personal terms neither of these two models can assist. The austerity model (UK)
is not doing so well and neither is the stimulus model (France).The outcome is likely a major reset of the
financial system which will cause much more trauma than the 2008 upset.Savers beware and stand by for future
shock.

Conclusion

Unless the banks and
governments change the way they deal with the rest of civil society, we will be
facing significant fault lines in our societies. The savers and the takers will
find themselves increasingly at risk of social confrontation and social
unrest.The choice would appear to be
between a long period of painful adjustment or a short sharp period of chaotic
uncontrolled change.Both will hurt.

On a lighter note and just for
fun, we are going to have an all Goldman Sachs MMA cage match between Mark “Brutal
Reckoning” Carney and Mario “Whatever it Takes” Draghi.Carney will be arriving at the Bank of
England in July and this may lead to some interesting confrontations as ideas
emerge on how to deal with fragile and fragmented economies.http://tinyurl.com/c4dlrdt

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

A crack addict or meth-head can
explain the whole situation. It is that
simple.

The headlines seem
shocking. People living in Cyprus are losing their money, even though they
thought it was safe in the bank.The US
government might shut down due to debt.Banks are collapsing in Spain and the Netherlands.

Cyprus bank line up during the recent crisis.Patrick Gaz - Getty Images

For
those without a significant political or economic background, the issues appear overwhelming.

The basic problem in the financial crisis is
that governments, just like a crack addict, have overspent, they are in debt and cannot break the habit.Worse still, they have made promises to pay
for expensive projects in the future, but no money for them. Banks too have overleveraged
themselves by making risky investments which
could backfire. They thought they had outsourced the risks to others,
but now they realize everyone is in the same mess and cannot pay either.(See a simple explanation of derivatives and
risk outsourcing with examples at: http://tinyurl.com/blhtc3q)

So why don’t they fix
the problem?

The answer is that
they are addicted to debt and risky spending, just like a crack addict.

At first, the addiction
to crack (debt) was just a recreational thing and only on the weekend. The money to pay for the
crack came from the savings account and did not affect the overall
financial situation. But then the crack
habit spread to the weekdays.Soon, the
funds in the savings account ran out, but the crack addict had a few credit
cards with a cash advance capability.This went on until the crack addict got a bank letter cutting off the credit cards. No worries says the crack addict. He still has a line of credit on the equity in his heavily mortgaged condo and that can pay the
credit cards. Meanwhile, the crack addict overcharges for expenses at work. Auditing picks up on
the fraud and fires him.Our crack addict then borrows money from his family
telling them about a sure bet for the future. Everyone then finds
out he has lost his job and quits lending him money.So he steals money from his sister’s
house when there for dinner.

This is your government on drugs!

Then he gets evicted,
and our crack addict is reduced to stealing money on the street. His favored method is to steal money from savers as they
withdraw cash from an ATM. But the police get wise to him, so the broken down crack addict just beats up old ladies and steals
their purses to get that next fix and make it to tomorrow.

He gets arrested.

Once in court, he
tells the judge he is a good guy with a bad habit. He gets sent to a rehab
center paid for by the taxpayers.He gets a financial bail out when he clears his debt through bankruptcy. So his creditors wind up losing all the money he used to pay for
years of his crack usage. Once out of rehab, our newly reformed citizen gets a
job in the financial district of the city where he lives.

All is well, until he
gets bored on the weekend and decides to head to the park to get some
crack. Not a lot. It is just for fun. And is just for the weekend.......

This is where we are at now.The
governments and banks have used every tax, fee, loan, equity, money printing, bond and accounting deferral trick
to keep spending. But the tricks have run out. They
cannot give up the the addiction, so they look around to see
who still has money. And they are planning on just taking it the same way our crack addict did at the ATM. (For an explanation of how this is possible,
see: http://tinyurl.com/cdrnm7f and http://tiny.cc/z4jcuw)

This will be the
struggle for the immediate future as the addicts who need the money take it from
those who have it.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

These are the men who
matter: Ben Bernanke of the US Federal Reserve, Mario Draghi of the European
Central Bank, Mervyn King of the Bank of England and Mark Carney, currently the
outgoing Governor of the Bank of Canada and the incoming Governor of the Bank
of England.

Collectively they are B3M
(Ben, Merv, Mario and Mark)

US Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke (right) pictured here with an American politican. (left)www.livetradingnews.com

The B3M central
bankers have taken effective control of the economy as well as the financial
and political system. This is both unnatural and unsustainable.Unelected and unaccountable, the B3M wield
more power over the lives and fortunes of people than any cabal in
history.Their machinations have either saved
the Western world, or they have undermined it in a manner that not even the cynics cannot
grasp. History will provide this answer – and maybe sooner than we think.

Band of Engladn Govenror King (left)pictured here with a British politician (right)www.thetimes.co.uk

We are told that we
must trust, for they are wise men who have studied in the hallowed halls of the
great academies. They are our betters – and as such we must listen, obey and follow.

They have stood on the
docks of Amsterdam as the tulip bubble popped and they saw the heads role off
French revolutionary guillotines as the assignant
currency failed. They were there in 1866
when the Bank of England’s Governor stepped into the breach and they lived
through the great depressions of the 1870s and the 1930s.To them, the Shadow Chancellor is not a modern
day Labour Party politician but rather the man that gave us Bagehot’s dictum.

﻿

ECB President Draghi (left) seen walking with a German politican (right)

But I do not believe
that they can integrate knowledge across boundaries – especially not the lofty
walls that the academics have willingly built between politics and economy. And by placing economics on top of politics,
they have perhaps unknowingly committed unnatural acts.

The bankers should
serve the economy and the economy should serve the polity.

Instead, the polity is used as a source of
revenue to serve the economy which is now controlled by the bankers.Natural market economics will not tolerate an
inversion forever.

I am not B3M.I don’t have a PhD in economics from Harvard
or Princeton.I am not a quant.And no, I don’t have a Masters Degree in Economics.I did work in the financial sector and I do
understand a thing or two about risk.

Bank of Canada Governor and soon to be Bank of England Governor Carney (left) seen here with a Canadian politican.www.huffingtonpost.ca

But risk was learned
in my early days flying as an air crewman in rotary wing search and rescue aircraft
in the North Atlantic. Carrying a gun in a war zone
provided some insights into threats, risk and risk management.On a single day’s travel in Bosnia alone there
were as many as six different currencies required.(There was a lesson about politics, war and
money in there somewhere!)

What are the messages we need to send to the B3M as we move into an uncertain economic and political future? These are the lessons I have learned
from my betters whom I have had the honor to learn from, to follow and to lead:

1. Simple is good. Complicated
can be fixed. Complexity kills.

2. No plan ever survives
contact with reality or the enemy.Plan
for that.

3. If all else fails, the
shortest answer is correct.

4. Occam’s razor is
good.Give folks a close shave with it
now and again.

5. If you cannot
explain your concept to an average kid in grade eight, you don’t understand it
either.

6. It is all linked
together:Politics. The Economy. War.
Nothing stands in isolation and they move together.

And for the B3M this
is the only economic and political rule that is always true:

7.That which cannot go
on forever – won’t.(ZIRP and QE)

Politics is ever the
master science and economics will remain the dismal one if left in the hands of only economists.At the end of the day, debased fiat currencies will dissolve. But power and politics will remain.All those economic models the B3M learned at
Princeton and Harvard failed dismally in 2000 and they failed again in 2008.
But their so-called risk managers still do not see the train coming straight at
them.When will the B3M change their models
so they can integrate knowledge across boundaries?

B3M and the Future
Revolution

These men are students
of the economy and finance.They
actually believe that there is a science called economics and they believe (hope?) that
by changing an input variable they can control outcomes. But economics is not a
closed environment and politics will forever change the value of the incoming variables.

They are not, alas
students of politics, so thus we shall all suffer.

Ultimately though, it
is the politicians who are at fault. Due to their idleness, corruption and
dimness, they have allowed the B3M to convince them to turn over the levers of
power.The financial class now tells the
politicians what to do and the masses of the polity have no one to serve them.

The politicians will eventually
have to take responsibility again. Either the current group of politicians
must awake and seize back their power and begin to serve the polity, or a
new group of political leaders will emerge from the chaos of the upcoming economic collapse.

This is economics for
the rest of us!

End of rant.

---
For a humourous look at how Governor Mark "Brutal Reckoning"
Carney and ECB President Mario "Whatever it Takes" Draghi may meet in an All Goldman Sachs cage match fight this summer, see http://tinyurl.com/c4dlrdt

Saturday, April 6, 2013

The Qassam Cyber Fighters claim they are attacking banks. What do we know about this?

﻿
﻿

Is now a good time to be outsourcing IT functions?

***UPDATE 12April 2013: The Qassam fighters say their next targets will be Key Bank and HSBC. Their statement reads:

The cyber attacks against the U.S. bank are continuing. The Key bank and HSBC bank have gotten out of reach according to what the users and customers of the banks have been reported and can’t offer any services. The best way for stopping the cyber attacks against the U.S. banks is removing the insulting film.

One victim of these attacks may be TD Bank which has a significant American presence in addition to its operations in Canada. Spoke persons for TD and
Keybank (American affiliate) have confirmed they were the victims of a DDOS cyber attack during the early
afternoon of 21 March 2013.The attacks
were brute force and aimed at bank servers. Customers were affected by reduced service
levels, but the attack did not appear to target customer’s accounts. This is just one of many cyber attacks against large banks which have occurred lately. Whether this will affect other banks such as RBC or BMO is unclear. RBC's involvement with the foreign workers scandal has shown that banks are still outsourcing IT functions at a time when they should be retrenching.﻿﻿

TD Bank is not saying
much, but the likely suspects in this case are the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters
Brigade.They have launched a series of
successful DDOS attacks against American banks recently and may be expanding
outwards.The Qassam Cyber Fighers have made generic
claims on pastebin.com claiming they are
responsible for these DDOS attacks. See an example of a pastebin claim below.﻿

A Few Words of Explanation about the Terms

What is a DDOS Attack?:The
term DDOS stands for distributed denial-of-service.Think of it this way. Imagine you want to
pull a prank on someone or disrupt their business.You get 100 of your friends to all call the
victim’s phone number at the same time.Your friends don’t call just once. They dial the same phone number as
fast as they can repeatedly for an hour – thus rendering your victim's phone number
inaccessible to both him and any legitimate incoming calls trying to reach him.
In short, by overwhelming the capabilities of the single phone line, your
render it effectively inoperable, even though no damage is done and all the
equipment keeps working.The victim’s
likely response is to take the phone off the hook and give up trying to call
anyone or answer the ringing.

A DDOS cyber attack works much the same
way.You and your circle of colleagues try
to render your victim’s computer system inoperable by overwhelming it with
large number of inputs.If a critical mass
of inputs can be reached, the victim’s website or public facing services will
collapse under the sheer volume of inputs.

Who Are the Qassam Cyber Fighters Brigade?This self declared group of activist hackers (hacktivists) announced their
campaign of attacks against banks on pastebin.com in the fall of 2012. They
claim their activities are a response to the posting of a YouTube video by the
American Pastor Terry Jones.The video –
The Innocence of Muslims – was regarded
by many Muslims as both insulting and full of false information.The Qassam Cyber Fighters have demanded the
withdrawal of the video. They target bank operations, believing that this will cost
the banks money during periods of shutdowns and this in turn will cause the
banks to pressure the government to find a way of getting the issue resolved. The
attacks have in fact been successful in that the video has been withdrawn from
YouTube. The video does keep popping up on the Internet as others continue to
distribute it. Mostly likely, the money and personal that support this effort
can be traced back to Iran.

In addition to a dislike of American banks, it would also appear that the Qassam fighters have a strong dislike of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This would appear to support the idea that Qassam has an Iranian base rather than a Palestinian one. The Palestinians are not likely to bite the hand that feeds (i.e. KSA).

Hmmm, is it possible that high politics are involved and not just concerns about one video?

What is Pastebin?Pastebin.com is a website where you can store large or small amounts of
text data online for extended periods of time. However, it has become a popular
spot for hackers to announce their hacking exploits. Typically, when
a hacker has obtained material from the inside of a company or from an email
system, they will post the stolen material online as proof of their success. For example, when Anonymous hacked into the American private
intelligence collection company STRATFOR in December of 2011, they posted
customer's names, credit card numbers and security codes to prove that they had
been successful in their massive hacking effort.My name was included, so I am aware of the
effectiveness of the system.

Analysis

In our modern world,
we are critically dependent on banking systems. This is especially true of the
payments and settlements servers that transact and balance off all the ATM,
credit card, debit card and other financial transactions every day. Without
these servers, the financial system and the economy would grind to a halt in 24 to 48
hours.In short, your debit card won’t
work, your credit card won't work and neither would the ATMs.Imagine how
rapidly civil order might decline if the systems do not recover quickly. With RBC looking like they have outsourced IT functions overseas and to foreign workers, this raises questions about the stability of their systems.

What do the bankers
themselves and those responsible for security think about the threat? One
valuable insight into the views of the super rich and the political elites is
the Davos Foundation annual meeting. This gathering of the super elites has
expressed serious concerns about the stability of their own systems.At the 2012 meeting they discussed cyber attacks
and the “Dark Side of Connectivity.”Their
thought on this?

The critical infrastructure that underpins our daily lives increasingly
depends on hyperconnected online systems. While significant resources have
historically been needed to cause devastating consequences for geopolitical or
corporate powers, it is increasingly possible for skilled individuals to do so
remotely and anonymously through networked computer systems. As power shifts
from the physical to the virtual world, a new paradigm for ensuring a healthy
digital space must emerge.

They further add:

There are no proven secure systems, only
systems whose faults have not yet been discovered, so trying to overcome “hackability” may be as
hopeless as denying gravity. Instead, the goal should be finding ways for
well-intentioned individuals to identify those faults and deploy remedies to
end-users before would-be cyber criminals can discover and exploit them.

(emphasis added)

When the super elites
are concerned about such problems and openly say so, maybe the rest of us should
take this seriously as well.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Canadians are known
for being overly cautious and too polite.Unless you give them a hockey stick….

Given this predilection
for caution, Canada is also known for having stable but boring and the most reliable economy in the G8/G20 group of countries.

advisor.ca

But is all well in the
land of the midnight sun? The Government is sending out warning signals.

In 2011, the Office
of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OFSI) made some rather un-Canadian
style comments. It was addressing the quality of the Boards of Directors
sitting at Canada’s big banks.Coming
from Canada’s banking regulator, it was a shocking to hear that some banks
lacked experience on their boards. Or as Stephen
Jarislowsky,CEO of Jarislowsky Fraser
Ltd., said "I find that there are many directors who are extremely nice
people and competent people, but very few bank directors who really know
banking.”Ouch!

This was followed
in July of 2012 with further statements from OFSI raising concerns about the
competencies of the boards with a particular focus on risk management. In
January of 2013, OFSI again raised board the issue of the bank
boards, including making improvements to the competencies of directors.

Most recently in March of 2013,
OFSI publicly put the “too big to fail” label on Canada’s six largest banks. This was surprising. Many industry observers had considered that only
the Royal Bank of Canada would warrant the TBTF label.As a result, these banks will have to
maintain a larger capital buffer and be subjected to stricter regulatory
oversight.

And then on 21
March 2013, Canada’s Finance Minister quietly dropped a bomb by including
‘bail-in’ provisions for Canada’s banks should they find themselves in
financial trouble.The bail-in
procedures were buried on pages 144 and 145 of the budget and smothered in financial
doublespeak, but the intentions are clear.As only an economist could write, Canadians were told that there could
be a very rapid
conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital. Written in plain English, this means that depositor’s money could be
grabbed fast to keep a bank going should it suddenly go broke. Presumably,
small time depositors holding less than CDN$ 100,000 would be protected by the
Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation, but the budget does not enlighten us on
this area. (See http://tinyurl.com/cvcf9v9
for more on this.)

It may be cold comfort for Canadians, but
the USA and the UK are making similar plans.(See http://tiny.cc/z4jcuw for more on this.)

Assessment

Canada is not Greece
or Cyprus, but sovereign and personal debt levels are a concern. Much of the
so-called Canadian economic model from 2008 to 2013 has been funded though
personal debt which has now risen to over 165% of income. Continuous low level
interest rates mandated by the Bank of Canada has produceda ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) which is
distorting the economy and causing a mis-allocation of capital.(See more on ZIRP and Zombies at http://tinyurl.com/9wng9vf)

Conclusions

Canada’s ruling Conservative
Party government is known to be a “banker and business friendly” outfit, so this is
not an ideological attack. Indications exist that the Government and its
regulators have genuine concerns about Canada’s financial and economic
future.Overall, the measures appear to
be a response to internal problems (personal debt, TBTF banks, over dependence
on commodity exports etc.) as well as external factors (EU ongoing financial
crisis, US sovereign debt, PRC slowdown and monetary imbalances).

We are given to the
impression that this is a government clearing the decks as the ship sails into
a storm.

(There remains the
possibility that the Canadian government had its confidence shaken last year
following a massive theft from the maple syrup cartel headquarters in
Quebec.Who knew Canada had a cartel?)

Leading voices in the climate debate, including President
Obama’s science czar, were advocates of baby credits to control global cooling before they advocated carbon
credits to control global warming.An examination of their past
views should be undertaken before more economic decisions are made. ﻿﻿﻿

A 1976 CIA report stated global cooling
was a major threat.

http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com

Their arguments have proven false in the past and they have advocated
other policies such as forced sterilization and baby swapping adoption services
based on gender. These policies were advanced in the name of science and the
environment, not for social engineering.

Consider John Holdren who is the Assistant to President
Obama for Science and Technology, the Director of the White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy, and a Co-Chair of the President’s Council of
Advisers on Science and Technology.He
is an advocate of increased spending to fend off an impending climate crisis.But his views are untrustworthy when you
examine his past.In order, he has
argued that increased amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere causes:

1. Global cooling and
crop failures,

2.Global warming,
and finally

3.Climate change.

Mr Holdren’s past views and his ‘scientific’ studies have
proven flawed. What would our current society like if Mr Holden had been
able to turn his ‘science’ into policy?

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich, a colleague of John Holdren and his future
co-author, published The Population Bomb.
This book stated that the Earth had
reached its maximum population and mass starvation would occur in the 1970s and
1980s.This Malthusian view proved
completely wrong, but it views are worth noting.The main conclusion was:

The battle to feed all
of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will
starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late
date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

The message of fear was obvious.

One advocate of this new anti-population movement was John
Holdren.He also supported the “global
cooling effect” which believed carbon emissions would cause temperature drops
and crop reductions.

In 1978, it gets interesting. John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich published a book
titled Eco-Science: Population, Resources, Environment.

In this book, Mr Holdren and Mr Ehrlich advanced their
beliefs on global cooling. They stated action was needed in response to science. Among the policies they
identified to reduce global cooling and control population growth were:

1.The creation of a “baby
credits” trading scheme where individuals could trade their reproductive rights
for cash with other individuals.Couples
with no babies could sell their ‘baby rights’ to other couples who wanted to
have more babies than the state determined level. This baby credit trading
scheme is an eerie predecessor to the carbon trading scheme now in place.

2.Putting a birth
control chemical in the world’s drinking water or food supplies to reduce
fertility levels to rates they would determine were acceptable and implant
young women/girls with birth control capsules when they hit the age of puberty
. Later, the capsules could be withdrawn when the woman
decided she wanted to have children (withing state proscribed limits.)

3.Create financial
lotteries with cash prizes that would only be open to childless people;

4.Create an adoption
system so potential parents who wanted a male child instead of a female could adopt
what they wanted rather than “trying for another child.”Unsuitable single mothers would also have to
give up their children for adoption.

Both Mr Holdren and Mr Ehrlich believed that by the 1980s,
global cooling would have a devastating impact and that the population would be
demanding action.Imagine what might
have happened if those governments had acted on global cooling. Now, of course,
we are told that schemes should address either global warming and/or
climate change.

History is soon forgotten and policy makers tend to live in
a time bubble where the past was last year and the future is the next election.
But what lessons could be drawn from these events, given that the people
involved in the past are now in positions of significant policy and spending influence?

a. Before undertaking any spending programs or policies such
as more carbon credit trading schemes, reviews should be made of what these
individuals and their colleagues have advocated in the past.

b. With respect to an individual spending project such as
vehicle emissions, multiple sources of data should be reviewed to determine if ideological
views have found their way into the discourse.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many mainstream scientists were
making morally demands about how the rest of us should reshape our lives to
meet their scientific views.Now, in
2013, we are facing new demands for more radical polices from the same voices,
albeit based on the exact opposite of what they believed earlier (cooling vs
warming).

Those scientists who made these past projections about
global cooling and mass starvation are frequently the same people who now
occupy significant positions of influence. John Holdren is one of those
people.Before letting their voices gain
any further influence, a review of their own views might be useful.

About Me

Hi there! We here at the Honest Banker do not have PhDs in Economics like Ben Bernanke over at the US Federal Reserve. Nor do we have Harvard degrees like Governor Mark Carney of the Bank of Canada/Bank of England. We are not quants with math degrees. What we do have is practical education and honest experience. We contribute to the real world economy while trying to figure out how to survive and build value in our lives and our communities under the current economic model. This model has been dictated to us by economists and politicians using many of the same seriously failed economic models that gave us the financial collapse of 2007 and 2008.
This is “economics for the rest of us” who live in the real world and are trying to figure out how to survive in it despite what the financial sector is doing to us.